


unity of the self, duality of the whole

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:10:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7267591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say the Avatar has no deamon. They say the Avatar <em>is<em></em></em> the deamon of the World Spirit, made flesh and given life to care for their children.</p><p> They are the bridge between worlds. Nobody ever wonders if bridges are lonely, yet they must be, mustn't they?</p><p> </p><p>A look into the Gaang and their solid, living souls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unity of the self, duality of the whole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raisindeatre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisindeatre/gifts).



They say the Avatar has no deamon. They say the Avatar _is_ the deamon of the World Spirit, made flesh and given life to care for their children. The past life's offer advice in times of trouble, and the Avatar's animal companion fills the need of the individual for spiritual companionship.

But in the end, it is a fact that they do not know the bond between deamon and human, and so are _other_. They are of flesh and yet they are of spirit, with no intermediary to go between. They are the bridge between worlds, the balance-keepers.  Nobody ever wonders if bridges are lonely, yet they must be, mustn't they? 

 

-

Aqillutaq is Katara's best friend.

It is with him that she trains her waterbending, trying to lift him inside a blop of water. He complains when she lets him fall into the cold sea, but the next day he's there, ready to help again. They keep each toher's secrets and play in the snow when they should be doing chores, go on walks together when Unnuk and Sokka start getting too enfuriating.

Aqillutaq is the only one that thinks her jokes are funny. She's the only one that doesn't look at him sadly.

Sometimes they wonder, what it would be like. Not out loud, but they don't need to speak to share. They ask themselves what he would have settled as, if he'd had the chance to grow up, if the Fire Nation hadn't attacked and he hadn't turned into a carcaju to protect them. Aqillutaq thinks he might have ended as a fish or a sea mammal, like a proper trained waterbender spirit animal. Katara thinks so too, but doesn't like to consider it. She doesn't like thinking they're wrong, less capable because they shifted at a bad moment.

Secretly, they hope it means they'll walk on growing land one day. It's a long way to the North Pole's waterbending instructors, maybe, maybe their differences will be their strengths in the long run, the way it wasn't the day snow fell darkly.

The Southern Water Tribe understands surviving against all odds better than anybody, but even at home, even here they look at Katara's carcaju and Aqillutaq's girl, small and devoted and too young for the weigh on their shoulders.

Besides, Aqillutaq swims as well as any fish, better than most walrus-seals. They're of the sea, no less so because of his fur and sharp claws. After all, isn't water the element of adaptability?

Still, no matter how lonely being the last waterbender of the South Pole may be, no matter how isolating being the only mammal in thousands of miles, they are never really alone. Katara pities Aang for that. Aqillutaq is quick to like him, the first to sniff him and tug in his robe, playful even when Katara does not allow herself to be, as hopefully trusting as her. They both sense something about this iceberg boy with the bison deamon that is not a deamon, and it is true that it has been a long time since they played with the penguins. If Aang has to choose a penguin to slide in, Aqillutaq is determined to go slower.

He doesn't actually follow with that, but it's the intention that matters.

 

  
\--

Sokka distrusts Aang at first, his own Unnuk flapping around his head with rumpled feathers.

Even ignoring the whole frozen-in-an-iceberg thing, or the last-living-airbender-and-doesn't-know-it thing, he'd grown up with scary tales of people without their spirit animal. Lost souls who wandered too far in the snowstorms, with their souls swallowed by ice demons, forever turned into pale copies of what they used to be.

Not that Sokka believed spirit tales. Those were for children, not manly powerful warriors. But he was the chief's son. He needed to know these thing, you know. Just in case.

That's what he tells Katara later. She's too busy hitting him to listen, screaming about how awful he was to try killing Aang when he was their guest. Well ex-cu-se him, he was only trying to out the poor kid out of his misery. Even if Aang didn't look miserable, or like a soulless wretch.

So that was a bad go. Aang forgives him, they end up travel companions and friends, and as much as he doesn't want to think of it he's pretty sure he's going to be his brother by marriage one day. Anyway, at least he doesn't just ignore their ideas because of Unnuk shifting.

At seventeen he should be going through his rites of manhood, not playing fetch-the-boomerang with a shifting spirit animal. He thinks that's part of why Katara doesn't take them seriously, part of why they aren't as good guardians as thry should be. But even when they're in danger Unnuk can't shift into big predators for long, alway turning to sleeker, smaller shapes, weasel to eagle to fox.

She only settles as an artic falcon in the day of the Black Sun. After that they get all the night shifts, at least until Chihiro and Zuko join them, and by the time they meet Piandao she's used to giving him tips from above.

After, they are one, in and out of the battleground, and Sokka learns to trust in her, trust in _them_. 

 

 

\---

Their parent's deamons don't touch Lei unless it is to clamp their teeth in his neck, to scold him: don't drag mud inside the house, be quiet, obey us. Blind deamons, even more than little blind girls, are to be silent and out of sight, a moving part of the furniture. Lei, who is loud and opiniated when Toph does not dare be, growls and gets a hit of the fan for his troubles.

One would think his presence would give her some greater measure of freedom. It doesn't, because if her parents don't consider capable of sneezing without help, they don't trust Lei around fragile breakable things. And in their eyes Toph is glass, a pretty trinket to be kept safe and gathering dust. Besides, it's a double shame: physical blindness is a fault of the body and forgivable enough. Blindness of the soul, to have a deamon as shallow-eyed as their baby girl, had killed all affection for Lei from the cradle.

It is also from the cradle that he's taught to be a boar.

They tell themselves they don't mind. When they were younger, before they knew better, they made excuses: Huizhong is a dog and everyone knows dog deamons are strict, and Kun is such a perfect Bei Fong boar, of course she wants them to keep the tradition. They don't, but that doesn't matter, because they leave and become the Avatar's Sifus, and nobody cares that Lei is as loud as Toph.

Toph doesn't care enough to feel bad for Aang, mostly because he looks (ah, looks!) cheerful enough. More cheerful than anyone has the right to be, if anyone asked them. Besides, they're blind. That alone was enough to keep most people away, both deamons and humans. Lei is unsettled still, and they're happy too, to be on the road and free, free.

The only freedom they had known until then was earthbending. They move together seemlessly, Lei using his shifting to get one up their opponents, all of them that favour the thick, compact forms of traditional earthbenders. They are many things, Toph and Lei, but traditionalist they aren't for sure.

He had hated having to be a boar cub, he confesses once to Unnuk. They'd be punished if he didn't, but they hated it. It felt like a betrayal of themselves, if each other, of everything they weren't and were expected to become. Unnuk doesn't understand completely but enough to turn into the same shape Lei had been then, an hare, and sit close beside him.

Aang trips once, the first week they're staying with the group. He touches Lei by accident and Toph flinches instinctively, ready to bury him under a boulder, when Lei leans against the hand. It feels nice, not as nice as Toph but good. Familiar. They figure it's just an Avatar thing and don't mind and Lei lets him scratch behind the ears.

 

 

\----

Zuko grew up with the tales of the unnatural air nomads, taught from infancy to live more and more apart from their daemons. Chihiro bears scars as he does, a livid baldness against her ugly face, and most days they can't do without fighting with each other, but he would not know how to be truly separate from her. Even if she spends most of her exile flying as far from the ship, even if they spend years either spitting angrily at each other or in aching silence, they are one jagged whole.

Resenting one's spirit is tantamount as disrespecting the great spirit's designs, and all the more importantly, as disrespecting one's inner self, Uncle tells him. But Uncle has nothing to complain about, he and Riko are famous for their connection in battle, and even fat she is a powerful sight, with her ridged face and wide lizard fangs. It wasn't Uncle that had such a pathetic shape. Chihiro is a bat, and what good is a bat for the Prince of the Fire Nation? What good is a Prince with such a cowardly deamon?

The Blue Spirit, on the other hand, has only to be thankful for such a small, capable deamon. The dark is his domain, and when he cannot trust his burned ear and faulty eye, Chihiro knows the way. Li the refugee has an ordinary deamon, good for stealing grapes, nothing strange for an orphaned boy with only a tired Uncle to look after them.

They find their way together, eventually, learn to know each other and love each other. Staring down the Firelord from the other end of the throne room, dao drawn, Chihiro misses the lightning easily.

 

 

-

Aang used to look out of the windows and fly as far as he could, to try to feel the stretching his friends told him they felt when their deamons were far away. He never felt any stretching but the press of wind in his bones, his glider and face.

The monks were all about letting go of attachment, but even they were happiest when reunited with their deamons. Sangmu used to sit in his head and buzz around him when he wasn't paying attention, and she and Gyatso were like one being, both with yellow feathers or robes. Even the boring council members stroked their bumblebees and parrots and canaries during boring meeting. Most of the Air Nomad's deamons have wings, and all of the airbenders' flew beside their deamons in hoops and twists. In the ground, they always looked so happy, so at peace doing anything together.

Then there is the council' decision, the storm, the South Pole, and the next time he returns to the temple there are only ashes and Dust, piles and piles of it.

Over him lifetime, Aang travels the whole world. He befriends people form every nations and bending style, flies in every type of wind. In his travels he meets daemons that fit their humans perfectly, humans that he would never guess had that deamon, even people who don't much like their daemons. None of them are like him.

There are some, like King Kuei, whose pet bear is as much as a part of him as him critter deamon, to the point that there will always be whispers of Ba Sing See's two royal daemons. A bear, just a bear, like daemons are only just one animal. Bosco is strange and lazy and its pretty awesome, Aang thinks, how much like Appa he is.

Momo dies in the South Pole at thirty two, with a whole clan of chirping children and grandchildren making a nuisance of themselves all over the four rebuilt temples. Aang's grief is no less powerful then than it would be if it were a part of his soul dying. His friends and acolytes pay their homage, cry and light incense with him. None of them understands his grieving, either.

When he comes home Katara is still teaching. He doesn't feel like flying. Makuu curls around him, snout wet, and they watch the sun set, the whole world cold and untouchable.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so all the name meanings, because I'm a dork that loves name meanings:  
> -Aquillutap means new snow in Inuit because Katara is the new snow of the tribe or something. Also he's a wolverine, another name for carcaju.  
> -Unnuk means evening in Inuit (evening, moon, Yue, all that)  
> -Lei means thunder in Chinese, because Toph.  
> -Chihiro's name meaning is searching, seeking in Japanese. Figured it fit Zuko pretty well.  
> -One of Riko's characters means white jasmin. I couldn't resist.  
> -Sangmu is Tibetan for the Kind-hearted one.
> 
>  
> 
> Please tell me if I got any of the meanings wrong.


End file.
